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Friday, August 13, 2010

Can I brag for a minute? Every once in a while I make a list and spend a day going to thrift stores, garage sales, estate sales, and antique stores searching for treasures. Usually I don't find anything. I'll pick up a few unique items here or there, but it's pretty rare that I find something useful. The last time I ventured out though I got three beautiful French canning jars in great condition and an unopened box of a dozen pint sized Kerr jars with pretty yellow lids! And all they needed was a thorough cleaning, a few new rubber rings and they can start a new life holding pickles and jam in my house. And all together they cost me less then you'd pay for one jar at a store today, so I'm being green and saving money, how cool is that?

The point of this though is that yesterday I used up the last of the raspberries I picked a few days ago to make jam and it came out glorious! One of the things I hate the most about the store bought variety is that it's always way too sweet. I know that sugar is probably cheaper then fruit, but if I want raspberry jam, I want it to taste like raspberries, and these were amazing raspberries.

This isn't exactly a recipe. Basically, I just mashed up and weighed all the fruit I had left, added a little less then a cup of sugar for each pound of fruit, squeezed in a couple of lemons and boiled it all with a box of no sugar needed pectin for 10 minutes. I processed the filled jars for another 10 minutes to be sure that it would last.

The jam set up perfectly and tastes just like the fresh fruit. I'm already dreaming of a cold December morning, some toast, a bit of butter and this jam still tasting of summer. Sometimes it pays to plan ahead.

I'm impressed with your jam "no recipe"! Its texture looks perfect! It shows that sometimes, a good eye and instinct are the best ingredients to suceed a recipe ;-) I am a big fan of Le Parfait jars! and the good news is they still sell those old-fashioned jars for a few euros!

I loved your raspberry jam recipe. If you took the photos yourself, pat yourself on the back; they're very well done. I just invented a recipe for figs and used an ingredient that ordinarily doesn't go in jam—vanilla. After I had cooked down the figs/sugar mix, I mixed in orange zest, cooked an additional 10 min. and then took off the heat and added the vanilla. Tasty stuff with a unique flavor!

Laetitia, the only jars that are reasonably priced around here are Kerr or Ball, so when I found these at less then a dollar a piece, I was ecstatic. I think that my sister would have literally killed me though if I went off to look for the Le Parfait jars on our last Paris trip :D

Mike, I've made a vanilla lemon marmalade before and I agree, it's an unexpected, but quite delicious addition. I will have to give your recipe a try.